The End of the Christian Era?

The April 13 2009 issue of Newsweek carries an article by Jon Meacham entitled "The End of Christian America", pointing out that "the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades.".

The article includes a quotation by R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, described by Meacham as "a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life ..." —as follows. "The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture."

Mohler's statement makes the false assumption, one readily espoused by evangelicals and others, that this country was founded as a Christain nation when, in fact, the founding fathers went to great lengths to ensure that this would not be the case. The assumption, however, is readily used by the religious right as a justification for weakening the separation between Church and State, to whit, their stance on abortion and same-sex marriage, and imposing their views on all Americans.

Concerning the inerrancy of the Bible, a pillar of conservative religious teaching, I have always viewed this as a survival strategy for the fundamentalist ministry. One of the delights of the Bible is its wealth of contradictions, allusions, mixed messages and (from the perspective of one with at least the rudiments of a scientific/humanist education) its risible improbabilities. An educated person, regardless of his/her religious beliefs, can read the Bible with both pleasure and inspiration, and draw from it what conclusions he/she may.

However, religious fundamentalism is premised on the notion that only those trained in the ministry are qualified to correctly interpret the Bible (as though such a thing were ever possible). That this has become a highly lucrative occupation is evident to anyone who watches Sunday morning TV, or follows the exploits of the Jim Bakkers and other scalawags of their ilk.